25
Over the next few weeks the heat wave intensified and so did Rannaldini’s obsessive passion; but whenever he flew home he found Wolfie and Flora wrapped round each other like Labrador puppies. He was in despair. Then, on the last Saturday in June, in the middle of Wimbledon fortnight, having despatched Kitty to stay with her excruciatingly dull, suburban mother, so he could install a two-way mirror between his dressing room and the spare room into which Flora had been moved, Rannaldini dropped in for a drink with Georgie and Guy.
As the sun had lost a little of its heat they sat out on the terrace, gazing down on a valley lit by white elderflower discs and garlanded by wild roses that shrivelled in an afternoon. Only docks, nettles and ragwort had been left by the ravenous sheep and cows. Both lake and river below it were dangerously low. Dinsdale panted gloomily under Georgie’s deck-chair.
Georgie, in a pair of oatmeal Bermuda shorts and a sage-green T-shirt, which showed the skin falling away from her upper arms and thighs, gazed into space. She had dried up like the valley around her. Great cracks split the footpaths. The ivy round the house was showering down yellow leaves and the lawns of Angel’s Reach, because Guy, unlike Rannaldini, observed the hose-pipe ban, had already turned brown.
Georgie and Guy were just reeling from another frightful row. While Guy was fussing around making Pimm’s, Georgie unbuttoned to Rannaldini.
‘Guy says he hasn’t seen Julia since her exhibition. Then he buggers off for two hours this afternoon and returns with poor Dinsdale utterly exhausted and reeking of Je Reviens. The shoe-maker’s children may be the worst shod, but adulterer’s dogs have the sorest paws.’
‘My dear, I cannot theenk why you’re upset.’ Rannaldini put a soothing hand on her razor-sharp shoulder. ‘You are cross with Guy so he seeks approval elsewhere. Having an affaire is like going on television, one gets the chance to talk at length about oneself in front of an admiring audience.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ pleaded Georgie. ‘If he needs her, why does he insist on sleeping with me all the time? I locked myself in the spare room last night and he broke the door down.’
‘Quite seemple,’ Rannaldini smiled. ‘He feel guilty and he know eef he stop fucking you, you will suspect something, and if he ees thinking so much of Julia, he needs the release.’
‘Ooo!’ said Georgie in anguish. ‘Is that the reason?’
‘My dear child, Guy will only really want you again when you find yourself a new man.’ He paused as Guy came out with a clinking tray.
‘Sorry, Rannaldini, I’d forgotten Pimm’s takes such a long time. Do you think Becker’s going to win?’
Guy, who always became more military when he sensed combat, had had a too short haircut. Rannaldini noticed with a stab of pain that Guy’s newly revealed, rather pointed, ears were very like Flora’s, as were his flat cheek-bones and square jaw. But Flora’s luminous white skin, her earthy animal features and big sulky mouth were all Georgie’s.
‘How’s my friend Kitty?’ asked Guy, putting a piece of mint in everyone’s glass.
‘Staying with her mother, a pair of clacking false teeth in an armchair, and sorting out my VAT,’ said Rannaldini.
‘Kitty’s a saint,’ said Guy heartily. ‘They always say behind every famous man there’s a clockwork wife.’
‘And behind every famous woman there’s a wildly unfaithful husband,’ snarled Georgie.
Turning puce, Guy shot a see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with glance at Rannaldini. Fortunately the telephone rang and Guy bounded in to answer it.
‘I found a bill for Janet Reger under the lining paper of his pants’ drawer,’ hissed Georgie. ‘Do you think he’ll claim VAT — virtue annihilated tax — on that? When in silks, paid for by Guy, my Julia goes, Christ!’
‘You are on form this evening,’ murmured Rannaldini noticing Georgie go quiet, trying to work out if Guy was talking in code.
‘Hallo, Sabine,’ he was saying. ‘Did you beat Radley yesterday?’
‘Single-handed, I should think,’ said Rannaldini.
Guy returned looking absolutely furious.
‘Sabine’s had to suspend Flora until the end of term for three offences: drinking in a pub, smoking in church — in
‘
‘Hell, it’s only a few fags, half a bottle of Sancerre and a roll in the hay,’ said Georgie, who thought it was funny. ‘At least she’s gone astray with the right sort of chap.’ She clinked her glass against Rannaldini’s. ‘Has Wolfie been suspended, too?’
‘Evidently not. He wasn’t caught smoking and drinking and the XI’s got a needle match against Marlborough tomorrow and Wolfgang still has two A levels to take. Flora shouldn’t have got caught,’ said Guy disapprovingly.
‘That’s always been your attitude,’ said Georgie flaring up.
‘I never did anything wrong,’ snapped back Guy.
Rannaldini was ecstatic. At last a chance to get Flora on her own while Wolfie and Natasha were still incarcerated.
‘And Sabine says Flora’s got a singing exam in ten days,’ said Guy, taking such a large gulp of Pimm’s he tipped cucumber and apple over his face. ‘I’d better go and collect her.’
And pop in on Julia on the way, thought Georgie despairingly. She shouldn’t have made those bitchy remarks, she’d have to crawl later.
‘Send Flora over to me,’ said Rannaldini. ‘I’ll go through her songs and give her a bit of coaching.’
Returning from a tele-recording in a suffocatingly hot London studio two days later, Rannaldini went straight into the shower. On the white porcelain floor lay a huge spider. A second later Rannaldini had assassinated it with a boiling jet of water. In almost intolerable sexual excitement he took a long time choosing what to wear, then opted to show off the depth of his tan and the broadness of his shoulders with an ivory silk shirt, tucked into cream chinos. Having brushed his hair till it gleamed, combed his black brows, which could splay like centipedes, and drenched himself in Maestro, he went downstairs to the summer parlour.
Here the cheerful serenity of primrose-yellow curtains and walls and drained blue and white striped sofas and chairs was somewhat marred by savage hunting scenes of lions and bears fighting off packs of dogs and men with spears. Rannaldini had just switched on Wimbledon and his own magnificent recording of Shostakovich’s
‘Christ, I didn’t come all this way to watch Becker. He’s got white eyelashes like Dad, and why’d you always listen to your own records? D’you spend hours conducting in the mirror?’
For a second Rannaldini listened to the growling brass.
‘I’m playing this in New York next week. It’s important not to repeat oneself. Shostakovich wrote thees music to encourage the Russians to resist the Germans.’
‘You’re half-German — I don’t need any encouragement to resist you,’ said Flora rudely.
Unfazed by her sniping, Rannaldini handed her a glass of Krug.
The sunshine, which had browned everyone else, had merely sprinkled a few freckles on Flora’s turned-up nose. She wore no make-up, but at least she had washed her hair. Her cornflower-blue espadrilles were trodden down at the back. Her lighter blue skirt had been shredded round the hem by her bicycle. A black shirt of Wolfie’s was knotted under her breasts.
‘You look good in black.’
‘Matches the blackheads. Where’s Kitty?’
‘With her mother.’
‘Then I’m off,’ said Flora crossly. ‘I’m not staying here unchaperoned.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Rannaldini took her and the bottle of Krug down some stone steps on to the terrace around which the Valhalla garden had reached perfection.
